[Fwd: Re: Documentation for Gutsy (string freeze exception request)]

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On 27/09/2007, Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Matthew,
>
> On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 11:38 +1200, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > Perhaps it depends on the type of error you're wanting to fix.
> >
> > Fixing a typo, grammar error, etc: The English localization would
> > become *slightly more* helpful, because more people would trust it.
> > Other localizations would become *much less* helpful, because the
> > sentence would no longer be translated. In this case perhaps it would
> > be better to make the fix on trunk, but not on the Gutsy branch.
> >
> > Fixing an error in facts or in instructions: The English localization
> > would become *much more* helpful, because it would become correct.
> > Other localizations would become *slightly more* helpful, because
> > before they were wrong for everyone, and now they're right for whoever
> > understands enough English to read them. In this case perhaps it would
> > be appropriate to go ahead with the fix on the Gutsy branch.
> >
> > In a few cases, it may be possible to fix a problem by moving or
> > removing a paragraph (either temporarily or permanently). This wouldn't
> > change any strings, so it shouldn't cause translation difficulties.

This is a tricky problem. My feeling is that it is really too late to
deal with these bugs and it would be unfair to the translators to
upload templates to Launchpad which are going to result in
untranslated strings appearing after the relevant deadline.

There is one exception - significant broken links, which I think we
really must fix. I'm going through the mountain of bugmail just now to
try and find and fix these.

> Is there any way that we could get the translation templates uploaded to
> LP quickly, skipping the long waiting time?

I don't think so. It's unfortunate that Launchpad is a bit broken just
at the important time in the release cycle, but these things happen.
What we must do is fix this in the next release cycle. We can do this
by encouraging the developers to make UI and documentation string
freeze earlier in the cycle, or staggering our work through the cycle
so that we have a soft freeze a bit earlier, after which we
concentrate for a longer period just on bug fixes and any late changes
to the UI which require updates.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF